


Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love

by morethanthedark (Kayndred)



Series: In a House by the Sea [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Fae, Alternate Universe - Shipwreckers, Combeferre Knows Everything, Cosette & Éponine are dangers from the deep, Mermaids, Multi, Pining Courfeyrac, Pining Enjolras, Prompt Fill, Secrets, Tattoos, The Holy Artist Triumvirate, Trade Agreements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2013-11-01
Packaged: 2017-12-31 03:50:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1026909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kayndred/pseuds/morethanthedark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras aims to bring down His Majesty’s fleet one ship at a time – Grantaire, Jehan, and Feuilly know more than people generally assume artsy types do – Bossuet plays errand boy while Joly, Feuilly and Bahorel turn into a knitting circle – Combeferre sees everything while Courfeyrac searches for windows – and Marius makes nighttime rendezvous about daytime events.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love’s fire heats water, water cools not love

**Author's Note:**

> Set in an ambiguous place that isn’t present day and definitely isn’t any time in history probably. 
> 
> I have very little grasp about how actually to make ship stuff happen – I just use Wikipedia and a terrible sort of imaginary physics and pseudo-logic.
> 
> Literally all my favorite tattoos come from [Meatshop-Tattoo](http://meatshop-tattoo.deviantart.com/). In this fic Grantaire has [this one](http://meatshop-tattoo.deviantart.com/art/Armor-of-Wyrms-day-10-Tattoo-of-the-ages-374416324), Jehan has [this one](http://meatshop-tattoo.deviantart.com/art/The-mighty-nordic-ram-project-339664660), and Feuilly has [this one](http://meatshop-tattoo.deviantart.com/art/Nordic-Wolf-mammen-style-358684407). Absolutely none of these are mine.
> 
> And [this](http://morethanthedark.tumblr.com/post/52104546305/mermaid-references-pirates-of-the-caribbean-on) is totally how I imagine Cossette and her fellow mermaids being all badass and totally not human.
> 
> All port names, town names, and the mentioned ship names are intended for fictional use only, and are not intentionally connected to actual places, people, or things. The almost-poem belongs to [George R. R. Martin](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/592229-for-the-night-is-dark-and-full-of-terrors), [Robert Frost](http://www.internal.org/Robert_Frost/Desert_Places), and [John Gillespie Magee, Jr.](http://www.deltaweb.co.uk/spitfire/hiflight.htm) respectively.

A good day for Combeferre begins before the sun has risen, at the time when the tide is out and the pale yellow lights have left the tree line for better pastures. They keep the windows and the doors locked until the sun crests a hand-span and a half above the horizon line, but Combeferre’s day starts an hour before everyone else’s - with few exceptions.

He sequesters himself away in the map room after he’s dressed and gotten his coffee, socked feet silent on the wood flooring. He sits cross-legged in the chair at the head of their oval table, seat scooted up close until he can rest his elbows on the curling edges of their coastal map. He pushes his fingers through his hair, tracing a pale green line with one finger. There are compasses with different colored pencils strewn across the length of the table, but it is the spring green line – Jehan Green, but all colors are Jehan colors – that he must pay attention to.

He drags a leather bound book to his side, allowing for gracelessness so early in the morning, and begins to write.

By the time another of the house’s inhabitants has awakened, Combeferre has written four pages and drawn a smaller detailed map of their preferred stretch of coastline, down to the very rock formation Feuilly likes to sit on in the summer.

Now – now the day is beginning.

—

Grantaire wakes up two hours after dawn – which, in comparison with most of the rest of the household, is several hours late. It is early, for him, but not early enough for anyone besides Jehan, who is curled against his side using his stomach as a table while he writes in his book. Grantaire would be more confused – Jehan writes on skin first, walls and tables and napkins and handkerchiefs second, books third – but he can see the small, looping handwriting of the poet’s all down his ribs and across his hip bones.

So Jehan is transferring, rather than using him as an actual desk.

“It’s about time you woke up.” Jehan says, tilting his head so that his braid brushes over Grantaire’s belly-button. His muscles jump and twitch. “I had to convince Enjolras that you would do the laundry with me if he allowed you to sleep. And that I’d hide all his maps if he didn’t let me finish.”

Jehan glances at him, a perfectly innocent smile curling his lips, and Grantaire laughs through his nose at him, attempting not to jostle the writer too much.

“You, friend, are a deviant. I don’t know why it took so long to see.” Grantaire says, folding his arms behind his head. It looks like Jehan has a good ways to go before they can get up and Grantaire can change into his day-clothes.

“Why Grantaire,” Jehan says, one hand pressed over his heart as he tosses his hair back dramatically, “whatever do you mean?”

They dissolve into laughter, and when Jehan goes back to inscribing his swirling writing into his book Grantaire doesn’t attempt to resist the light doze he falls into.

—

Marius likes doing the laundry on days like today – when the sun, two hand spans above the sea, is warm and smooth across his skin. There are long strings of clothes lines flying down the crest of their hill (“Cliff! Heathcliff, even!”), shirts and pants and socks drifting slowly in the breeze, like they’re flying their colors, even if those colors are stripes and Courfeyrac’s atrocious pink and green underwear.

There are six wooden clothes pins in his mouth and another two in his hands, pinched in his fingers, as he holds the shoulder of what is probably one of Enjolras’ old shirts against the line. The patches on the elbows are of the sturdier cloth Joly prefers to use when patching garments, which means that it belongs to last year’s crop of conquests, and the lacing at the throat of it is obviously from another shirt.

Definitely one of Enjolras’ hodgepodge work shirts then.

“Marius!” Grantaire calls from several feet away, where he sits with Jehan elbows deep in wash water, his own forest green shirtsleeves rolled up to his mid-bicep. Suds cling in the curls of his hair from where he and Jehan have attempted to tame it with braiding (slightly effective) and ribbons (less so). “Help me settle something. Jehan here insists that our Accord with the kelpie in Fallbrook is more genial than the one we have with the Way Court mermaids. What say you?”

He hums around his pins, snapping another two on the white shirt’s arms. “Mermaids.” He replies around the wood. “The Kelpie in Fallbrook has an accord with ‘Parnasse, too, and plays the both of us for tithes of little more than baubles but could cost us our hands.” He shuffles to the side with the clothespins in hand, lifting the last clothing item off his shoulder to hold against the line. “The mermaids allow us free passage in their waters as long as we stay away from the crewmen, and they toss the things they don’t like back up on the shore.”

Grantaire looks triumphant when Marius glances over his shoulder at them, a smug smirk curling his lips as he scrubs a set of knee-pants against the washboard. Jehan looks like he’s contemplating lighting someone on fire (hopefully Montparnasse – what little competition he does pose isn’t worth his infuriating personality), and the heavy duty scrub brush smacks Grantaire in the face a moment later.

“You asked!” Grantaire shouts, voice full of laughter, flicking suds at the poet. “You asked, you should be ready for good answers! Even from Marius!”

There’s a sound that is very much a growl (Marius doesn’t look), before Grantaire is shouting, “No Jehan wait - !” and then a heavy thump and a groan when he tackles Grantaire to the ground (Marius totally looks).

“You’re an asshat.” Jehan says, pinning Grantaire’s shoulders with his knees. He has the artists fingers laced with his, and he glares down at him with something calculating in his eyes.

“I’m going to need your help drafting another Accord later then.” He says eventually. “You know the fae technicalities better than the rest of us, and you’re more likely to go into town.” Jehan smiles like a knife-blade. “Would you? For me?”

Grantaire just laughs, a slightly hoarse huff against Jehan’s not inconsiderable weight on his sternum. “Of course, word-smith. Who would I be if not the predictable drunk?”

There’s a novel there, in those words – a novel that Marius isn’t privy to, a novel that Marius may never know, because although he’s of The Friends, he’s so terribly new it’s sometimes hard not to remember.

(There is history in the slope of Grantaire’s neck as he bends over his art and the hand that Feuilly places on his shoulder while Jehan presses their backs together and writes his poems, a solidarity in their interactions that sometimes baffles even Combeferre, he knows, who has more of the story tucked into the folds of his maps than anyone else ever will.)

Jehan laughs at him, bright and tinkling, and they get back up and tackle the laundry again, leaving Marius to stare out at the flat expanse of ocean that moves in and out of sight as the clothing blocks his vision.

—

“You went over the maps this morning?” Enjolras asks, shuffling the papers on his desk into neatness by order of importance.

“I did.” Combeferre replies, and flicks the side of Courfeyrac’s head when it becomes a little too obvious that he’s staring through the window. “We’re tracking the  _HMS Arcadia_  right out of Greenport. They’re going to be looking for the Way Haven tower when they pass by,” he circles a small dot on the map in green, “so if we move our operation down the coast here,” this time an X, “we’ll be close enough for them to think it’s Way Haven but far enough away that they won’t see the actual tower.”

“Also we have one of our Heatherdale men in the tower.” Courfeyrac chips in, only after Combeferre has tugged on his ear. “He’ll keep the tower dark until we signal.”

Enjolras makes an affirmative noise but ends up with more of his attention on a page Combeferre can’t see, his fingers moving over its surface.

(It’s one of Grantaire’s most sober sketches – the prow of a ship with Enjolras almost climbing onto its bowsprit, arm flung out toward some unseen horizon. Behind him the Amis hang from the rigging and clamber over each other and the sides of the deck to see what he points towards. Enjolras’ face is the image of determination, eyes alight with ‘passionate fire’ and set fiercely, the rest of them varying degrees of enthusiastic excitement and wonder and joy. Combeferre’s own likeness has a smile that Grantaire describes as ‘benevolent’ but means ‘fondly proud’, and it makes ice run down his back every time he sees it.

The artist himself is absent from the drawing, but Combeferre knows – art like that can capture hearts and strike men dead, and if Combeferre can look into his own etched face and see truth, what, then would Grantaire have drawn?)

“Good.” Enjolras says, seating himself before them on the couch across the table, a compasses in one hand and a pen behind each ear. “We’ll be ready two days before they’re supposed to pass Dart Point, so that we have time to set up where we need to be and have the contingencies in place.”

_“No Jehan wait - !”_

Courfeyrac and Enjolras’ attention snaps to the window and the men outside, one of whom is lying on his back in the grass while the other pins him with his weight. Combeferre can see Marius trying and failing not to look at them, clothing and clothespins held in his hands. There’s a moment of seemingly teasing conversation before Jehan helps Grantaire up and they get back to their washing like nothing has happened.

Combeferre waits a whole three minutes before he sighs through his nose and rolls up their charts, saying, “I’ll contact our Heatherdale people before it gets too late.”

If Enjolras’, “Of course,” is a little hurried and Courfeyrac jumps at the sudden noise, well.

At least Combeferre knows they hear him, sometimes.

—

Bossuet finds Feuilly, Joly and Bahorel fixing nets on the back porch, a bowl of cigarette stubs in the middle of their circle and Joly’s medical supplies laid out on the bench next to him. They remind him very hilariously of a group of old women knitting and chattering at each other about their grand-kids  what with the way Joly complains about the state of their rooms (“You’d be inclined to think that we ran a house of vagrant children who’ve never known cleanliness in their lives, good lord!”), to Bahorel telling tales of his latest brawls (“Almost flattened the man, I swear, never seen Grantaire and Jehan so up in arms!” ) and Feuilly bemoaning the price of art supplies and the fact that they didn’t normally last the trip through the water to the shore (“You can’t just bathe a brush in undiluted salt water and expect it to work the same as it did several hours previously when it  _was dry_.”)

It’s all very amusing and brings a smile to his face, but he’s on a mission and so he has to cut them off.

“Afternoon!” He says, and takes care when he leans against the door way. “Jehan says that Combeferre has a specific type of wax for formal documents and that you, dear Feuilly, know where that is?” He looks at the other man hopefully, wary of returning to the poet with less than he’d asked for.

What Jehan had actually said was, “Combeferre has this excellent wax that he uses for the really official formal mail and treaties or world conquering I have no idea it’s probably blessed by the Pope and made with the salt from angels tears but don’t tell Enjolras he’d throw a  _fit_  if he knew Combeferre had something like that – anyway Combeferre has this thing and Feuilly knows where it is go get it for me please I’m so busy with R I really can’t just  _leave_  you know how he is – “

(Jehan has long since realized that the easiest way to overwhelm someone is by being a great rambling mess about what you want them to do – he allows himself to go off on tangents and speculations that are so wild and outrageous that he ends up talking very quickly, easily disguising the fact that he’s asking for something almost Sacred, with a capital S.)

Feuilly looks at him like he might be crazy before saying, “It’s on the middle shelf of that cabinet with the fancy quills no one wants to use in it. Black box with the gold wing on it.”

Bossuet thanks him and heads back into the house, never once thinking that Feuilly’s own speculative tone and Jehan’s rapid fire speech might be somehow connected.

(Alas, to be fair, Feuilly wouldn’t realize it for some time yet.)

—

The sand is warm between his toes even though the sun is a purple smudge on the horizon, night having taken over most of the sky. The stars scatter moving flecks of light across the water, but Marius is more focused on the spaces between the stars than the light itself. He makes his way down toward the rocky out cropping that is almost a tide-pool, his hands scrabbling against the smooth surface of the stones.

When he gets situated atop the boulder there is little to see besides inky black water and blue black sky, the stars mirrored between them, and the way the sun makes its last dying rays look like it is drowning in the arms of the sea.

If he were an artist or a poet, he might appreciate it more.

Instead, his attention is directed more toward the drop-off beyond the rock shelf than the beauty of the night.

As it has happened every night before, Marius doesn’t see her until she is rising from the water, her blond hair a dark honey cloud in the fading light. For a moment her eyes are the liquid silver-white of the Huntress, the one Marius knows is more than just instinct – but then she is smiling at him, close mouthed and with human-blue eyes, and his fear fades away.

“Marius.” She says, voice echoing with the ocean’s call. It fades when she frowns, just so, and she says again, “Marius,” less the Huntress and more his –

“Cosette.” He says, and the smile that curves her lips is the most beautifully human thing he has ever seen, and it is every time.

“And what a day have you had, my jolly sailor bold?” She asks, folding her arms below her chin. Marius’ ears redden immediately and he looks down and away before replying.

“Wonderful.” He says, and it’s true, even though he doesn’t want to talk about it. It was boringly wonderful, considering what Enjolras wants them to do later in the week. “And what about you, fair sea princess?” And he still feels like an idiot when he says it, even if it makes Cosette laugh like waves cresting on the beach.

“Exciting.” She says, and tells him a tale of her sisters and how they swam out to the boat Marius had told them about, the  _Arcadia_  – how they saw all the lovely men there, and their glittering treasures, and how they riled and teased the sea just as they always have, how they called out in the voices of loved ones for men too lonely to know better.

She does not tell him of the handful who leaped to them, arms and hearts open, eager to be reunited with their souls half. She does not tell him of the way they caught those men in their arms and took them down below the waves until they stopped twitching and their eyes were dim.

“I have something for you.” She says instead, and draws from the rocks a thin metal box, bound tight to keep the water away. “There was a man on the boat we sang to, called him to give us his letters. He threw this into the sea.” For his wife, she doesn’t say – for the woman they pretended to be.

Cosette does not hate herself for lying to Marius, nor does she hate what she is because what she and her kin do frighten him. But she would spare him that knowing, the knowledge that her civility is for him and him alone.

That she never comes to meet him hungry.

He takes the box and opens it carefully, balancing it on his knees. He knows Cosette likes his reactions to her gifts, which are, more often than not, things he hints at needing for Enjolras. She may not understand their value to the blond revolutionary, nor care particularly, but it is not his face she gets to watch – it is Marius’.

“Oh Cosette,” he says, eyes scanning the neatly written lines of text. Damp, slightly, but in better condition than if they had fallen into the water when Enjolras brought the boat to shore. “These are perfect, these are excellent!” The smile that he gives her makes his face ache it is so wide, but she smiles back and he feels as though he could fly, lift right up and away with the heat it makes in his bones.

They talk then of unimportant things, things Marius cannot say to the Amis because they would not understand, or they would, but he wouldn’t want them to. He talks until his voice is raw with speaking and the salt wind, and then pulls his water cask from his shoulder and says, “I have a favor to ask you.”

Cosette tilts her head, brows up and curious. “For your cause?” she asks, without the sarcasm Grantaire or their critics in town normally attribute the subject.

“No.” Marius says, drinking briefly. “For me, personally. I don’t… I have friends that may be in trouble? Or may have had trouble follow them.” He’s not sure, but it could be anything.

Cosette blinks at him, expression clearly stating that she needs more than that to give anything away.

“What can you  tell me about Grantaire, Jehan, and Feuilly?”

—

The next few days pass in a steady rhythm of movement, wherein Combeferre leads the organization of their equipment down the coast while Courfeyrac goes into town to talk to their people and collect correspondence, which Enjolras replies to and takes into consideration when he brings them back.

Bahorel, Feuilly, Joly and Bossuet are the ones who accompany Combeferre most often, which leads to a whole lot more gossip than Combeferre initially thought went on in their group.

“Marius has been acting strange lately, hasn’t he?” Bossuet asks, carefully sliding one of their oil barrels onto the cart. Feuilly and Bahorel secure the casks with treated rope while Joly keeps their nets from tangling too badly. Combeferre, at the driver’s bench, straightens the map with a flick of his wrists and says nothing, half eavesdropping and half charting their course.

“He has.” Joly says, sliding forward to assist Feuilly with the ties. “It happened after that day with the laundry, I think. I know he’s taken to walking the beach at sunset,” Bahorel lets out a bark of laughter and Feuilly punches him in the shoulder, “but he’s been doing that for about two and a half month’s now. Nothing’s changed, really, since he’s started.” Joly finishes off the knot with a twist of his fingers and sits back on one of their travel chests.

“Is it the mermaid, do you think?” Bossuet asks, hissing in surprised pain when he jambs his fingers between a box corner and the back of the cart. “Maybe she’s told him something he doesn’t know how to deal with.”

“Maybe.” Joly says, and if Feuilly is carefully, cautiously stiff with his movements, then only Bahorel sees it, and he says nothing.

Combeferre closes the map with a snap, calling over his shoulder, “Let’s get the last of this tied down. We want to be at Musichetta’s before the sun sets.” He springs from the seat and goes to help Bossuet and Joly as they finish loading the cart, one eye on sun.

—

Grantaire is the one to light the first candle that night, a plain white tower of wax like a pillar, its base wrapped in ash leaves. He sits it on a metal plate on the sill of the bay window while he locks the panes into place, shutters drawn inside and out.

In the distance he can hear the pipes and the small drums of the Brown Men, can see the dancing lights and the thin silhouettes of moving figures too tall to be the fairy pipers.

“Lost, all of them.” Jehan says from his shoulder, leaning against his back, chin hooked over the curve of the joint. Grantaire’s collar slips down enough for the thick bands of his tattoos to peek over the fabric, and Jehan’s fingers tap over them like the feet of men and women caught in the thrall.

 _We will always feel it, Grantaire._ He whispers in the Old Tongue.  _We will always see the lights and know the call, and the drums will grip our hearts in their rhythm and we will want to fallow them._

Grantaire leans back into the poet, hands still resting on the windows, gaze off beyond the dancing lights, to a time that was.

_But we will not._

They finish locking the windows and doors of the first floor in silence, the candle between them as they go up the stairs to begin on the second story.

—

 _Dear Musichetta_ , begins the letter in Enjolras neat, spiking-looping script.

_Thank you, once again, for allowing Combeferre and his small contingent to room in your home for the night between our own house and their destination. It is with great thanks that we send to you the bi-monthly tithe, as packaged in oak and mahogany chests that have been brought by our cart to you._

_It is with equally great displeasure and rue that we ask for any and all information you can spare us on the matter of the wayward Montparnasse and his accord with our mutual contact the Fallbrook Kelpie._

_Please respond with only what information you can spare that will not endanger you with either Montparnasse or the Fallbrook Kelpie, as you are a valued and esteemed member of our group and we would hate to place you or your household in any danger for the sake of a minor investigation._

_Yours with sincerity,_

_Enjolras & Co._  
l’ABC  
Lightpeak House

Musichetta throws it into the fire once she’s read it, making sure that it turns into little bits of ash before she even considers finding paper to write a response for it.

—

They sit in Musichetta’s house that night and watch the will-o-wisps and the Korrigans troop pass by at a distance, wary of Musichetta’s iron door hinges and fire pokers, of the ash and rowan wood that makes up her house.

“Are they always so close?” Joly asks, sipping nervously at his tea. Bossuet sits beside him, Musichetta on his other side while Combeferre, Feuilly and Bahorel sit in the chairs opposite theirs.

“Mm.” Steam clouds her face briefly. “Not so. I have visitors, which is unusual – they know that you only come here on holidays and when something will be happening down the coast. And since it’s not a holiday,” her head tilts to the side, dark eyebrows cocked.

Maybe it is the angle of the hill, Combeferre thinks. Maybe their cliff keeps them away, keeps the lights and the music from tempting them into opening their doors and stepping out onto the shifting grass.

Feuilly sips his tea in silence, attention directed carefully away from the window.

—

The wind is chilled and stinging against her skin, smelling heavily of salt and things to come. Her hands dig into the rock face as she levers herself up, tail dragging behind her and almost useless in her climb. The boulder isn’t very large, but it rises above the sea in view of the cliff house, and that is all she needs.

 _Grantaire! Jehan!_   Eponine calls, voice high and thin to carry on the wind. _Jehan! Grantaire! Answer me!_

But their windows are shuttered tight against the breeze from the ocean and the lights down by the forest and Eponine’s cries are lost to them.

In the drawing room, the artist’s room, Jehan and Grantaire sits with shirts cast aside, hands on each other’s shoulders, willing their tattoos to lie still in their skin.

—

Enjolras, Courfeyrac and Marius arrive on their own horses the day that the _HMS Arcadia_  is to pass by their fake lighthouse. Their stretch of beach is perfect, crisply clean of debris and pebbly, and at night the heavy rocks that look like dragon’s teeth are lost among the shadows and the star light.

It’s perfect, and Combeferre loves it in the way Bahorel loves the perfect edge of a knife blade, or Feuilly loves the straight shaft of an arrow.

“How far down the coast are we setting up the tower?” Enjolras asks, eyes on the horizon. They only have a few hours before sun set, and then hopefully only a few hours more before the ship makes its appearance.

“At the top of that cliff there,” he says, and points to the hill that drops off abruptly into the water. “Way Haven’s port is before the light house, so they’ll be aiming here when we drag them in.”

Enjolras narrows his eyes. “And the mermaids?”

It’s Marius who calls out next. “They say that they’ll nudge the boat along in this direction, but we have to have the tower up in time. The usual, basically.”

Their leader nods, settled for the moment, and then whirls around to address the men behind him.

“The  _HMS Arcadia_  is a ship straight from  _His Majesty’s_  private fleet, bringing overpriced, ill bought goods from the territories that made them right into the heart of them Empire.” His voice rises with the passion of it, until he’s stalking in short lines from one point on the beach to another, all eyes on him. “It is our sacred,  _people given_  duty to bring this mad, oppression driven ‘trading’ to an end. We will bring the  _HMS Arcadia_ straight to the shore, and on the rocks behind us we will crush her, and take back what is rightfully ours.” He breaths deeply through his nose, meeting the eyes of every one of his followers.

“Now let us raise the tower. For the people!”

“For the people!” The crowd echoes, voices bright with belief.

—

 _The night is dark and full of terrors._  Jehan writes on his skin, like a prayer, like an omen.

 _They cannot scare me with their empty spaces_.

 _I reached out and touched the face of God_.

_Between stars, on stars where no human race is._

The night is dark, and Grantaire leans his back against Jehan’s, while miles away Feuilly twists rope to his will and turns his eyes back toward where he knows their house is.

—

The tower is a wooden construct that Combeferre, Feuilly, Bahorel and Grantaire had crafted one summer, directed by Jehan and Joly and urged on by a sort of frantic buzz that was fed by drink and the hungry heat. It is short enough to please Joly’s sensibilities about height and the dangers of the wind, but at night is almost indistinguishable from a small lighthouse.

The very type that dots the coast, created as such because the townspeople couldn’t afford to make them bigger.

Now they lash the wooden beams together with rope and anchor it to the ground, Bahorel helping Feuilly pull their big lantern up onto the platform where he will sit and pretend to be a lighthouse.

It’s all very simple and very dangerous, and it sets Joly’s teeth on edge every time.

He watches, feeding Bahorel rope, as their custom lantern is slowly raised into the air and then heaved onto the wooden planks that are just large enough for the light and the small blinder that will hide Feuilly from the light.

It settles into place with a click as each latch is snapped into the lanterns foot, and although the danger has passed, Joly still eyes it speculatively.

From his place knee deep in the water, Marius brings a pipe to his lips and lets out one long, low note, followed by two shorter, higher pitched ones.

A voice sounds from the water, a gentle chord that makes him smile into the fading light.

Enjolras calls for them to gather around the cart and collect their iron rings, and Marius turns from the water to wrap what little protection he can around himself.

The night has only just begun.

—

_I can see it._

_And the people on the beach?_

_They are ready._

_Good._

—

Exactly as Enjolras anticipated, their operation goes off without a hitch. His blood sings in his veins as he watches the  _Arcadia_  scrape, drag, and then tear itself open on the jagged boulders before the beach.

He can hear the siren song of the mermaids from his place on the shore, his knives strapped to his hips and his boots already off, pants rolled up to above his knees. They watch in awe as fires stutter and then die in the ship, like ghostly suns, and when the voices of their saltwater help finally fade he calls out, “Now!” and they plunge into the sea.

From one of their two tiny rowboats Combeferre shutters his lantern across the water to Joly and Courfeyrac seated in the other, and they set off rowing toward the wreckage, Bahorel rowing Combeferre out while he gets ready with the net.

From then until dawn is spent trawling the waters, nets out, alternating boat-work and diving into the rocks. There are flashes of tails and arms flecked with scales, clouds of hair that disappear as quickly as they come.

They find no bodies, and there are things on the shore that they did not get themselves.

—

For all Enjolras loves the ocean, loves the dive to retrieve the goods so wrongfully taken from them, it is the trek home that settles his satisfaction into his bones, the knowledge that they have, once again, ripped something from the oppressive hyper-capitalist pig that pretends to run their country.

They crest the low hill before Lightpeak House just as the sun is reaching its zenith, and he can see even from that distance that Jehan and Grantaire have set out another load of laundry to dry, that their rugs are airing in the sun, that the windows are open and the clean sea air is clearing the stagnation of the night from their rooms.

“It’s good to be back.” Combeferre says from his side, his horse keeping pace with Enjolras as they plod unhurriedly down the path. The sun catches his glasses and hides his eyes, but the lines around his mouth hint at a smile.

Enjolras thinks of his map room and the letters he has to reply to, the way they are going to have to cart their loot into their shop in town so that they can disperse it back among the people through the guise of sales. He thinks of long nights, and hours of work, and pencil smudges and ink stains on his hands and on his shirt cuffs. He thinks of frustration, of the ripped and curling poster of their King, His Supreme Excellence, with its motley assortment of daggers and throwing knives pinning it to the wall.  

He thinks of strong tea and Marius singing mermaid songs and Combeferre reclining on their couch with a book in his lap and his socks off, of Courfeyrac helping Jehan braid water lilies into his hair, of Bossuet and Joly on the back porch watching the sea birds. He thinks of Feuilly and Bahorel practicing their aim on the woodman target by the green house, and the smell of warm food and amiable chatter.

Of Grantaire, paint stained, bottle in hand, leaning back on two chair legs and never, ever falling, his mouth smug and red.

“It is.” He replies, and means it. He moves his horse into a trot and Combeferre laughs behind him.

—

“Grantaire, they’re back!” Jehan calls up the stairs, excitement ringing in his voice. Grantaire drags the back of his wrist against his forehead, spreading paint across his brows and in his hair.

“Be down in a minute.” He shouts back. He has to disentangle himself from his stool, lift the several small pallets from his legs and lap and drop his brushes into their bucket before he can even stand up.

He stretches, his back and hips popping satisfyingly, and eases the windows of the drawing room open slightly, allowing the paint fumes to dissipate. The sun filters through the glass and the pale green curtains, and the wind makes them billow out gently, turning the room into a picturesque mess of colorful chaos.

There are canvases leaning against three walls, six in total, three more on easels in various stages of dryness. Some of them are heavy, layers and layers of oil paints, so thick there are textures and grooves. Others are light, watercolors and the faintest traces of colored pencil.

He leaves the faces – recognizable, burned into his brain forever – and heads down stairs to view his inspiration in close proximity, the door locked firmly behind him.

The ABC is trooping into the mud room when he descends the stairs, a little haggard but bright with the joy and triumph of a job well done, of another ship sunk. They look burned, too, no doubt from the sea water and their long ride from the beach to Musichetta’s and then back to Lightpeak. He allows himself a moment of analyzing, surveying the droop and bounce of their hair and the crinkling of their eyes, their easy smiles.

Jehan looks to him from his place by the couch and then to Feuilly, who smiles halfheartedly, and strips his jacket off with stiff arms. He frowns, but addresses the room at large.

“How fare thee?” His eyebrows wiggle up, teasing. “A successful crime committed, then?”

Enjolras glares from where he’s folding his over shirt and his jacket, mouth open to protest, when Combeferre says, “Indeed. And you?” He looks from Grantaire to Jehan and back, eyebrows cocked and curious. “Was your five day reprieve exciting?”

Grantaire looks to Jehan, who’s eyes are bright but his face is blankly happy, and then to Feuilly, who looks at Grantaire like he wants to submerge himself in the bath and never come up. He thinks of a language they can’t speak but to each other, of how their tattoo’s itch and burn and strain when one of them is too far away, of the way their blood sings to the drums and the drums sing back.

He thinks of an Accord he has drafted and Jehan has stamped, and how none of them are very good at judging the repercussions of their actions.

“Oh, you know.” He says, leaning against the banister with his chin on his hand. “The usual.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is a prompt fill for the infinitely lovely [lapieuvrebleue](http://lapieuvrebleue.tumblr.com/), which can be found [here](http://morethanthedark.tumblr.com/post/52105701753/hello-if-i-can-ask-for-a-prompt-then-what-about-les), and inspired the continuation that begins [here](http://morethanthedark.tumblr.com/post/65631929227/like-fire-and-powder).
> 
> Hit me up on [tumblr](http://morethanthedark.tumblr.com/) sometime!


End file.
